During the TechNet consultation in Bangkok ten innovation projects that were given special prominence.All the projects are truly impressive in their scope, attention to detail and focused on collecting better data for supply chain management.
All these projects deserve to be supported to either succeed or to fail; the successful ones will improve the immunizations service, the failures will be a useful source of information on how to do better next time.I am however struck by the fact that these projects hardly say a word about supporting the people who will be asked to use these new technologies. These people are among the lowest-paid in the immunization service and who also work in the toughest conditions. High quality hardware and software need to be matched with high quality wetware: the people.
A proposal:
The organizers of the next Innovation Café should aim to have an equal number of innovative projects to support health workers to use the technology solutions. What do you think?
In the meantime, some suggestions for human resource managers: HR managers have the skills to improve recruitment,training and development,performance appraisal, and pay and benefit systems for the employees and volunteers in the health services.
What are your ideas for solving the highest priority challenges to ensure that the staff in the supply chain are highly skilled and highly motivated?
One last point: while technologies are mostly developed in the North many of the best adapted applications of these technologies have been developed in the South. Mobile money is a good example that has transformed banking in Kenya while it remains in its infancy in the US and the EU.
Do you have any ideas to stimulate African solutions for Africa?And Asian solutions for Asia?